Lost

One of the most poignant moments of my life still to this day changed me forever.. The night my world was turned upside down...the night my father slipped away and didn’t return. I was fifteen, rosy cheeked and innocent, I had never even kissed a boy. Naive and sheltered, I knew nothing of what was to come after that night- I had no idea that in a matter of months, everything I had ever known would change. My comfortable bubble that shielded me from reality up until then was shattered...all in a matter of seconds. As I look back on the memory it is hard to place myself within it. I don’t remember the faces of people, just the expression of pain on my father’s face. It was as if in a film, the entire focus amongst all the kaleidescopic chaos was on my father...my hero, fading away in front of my very eyes. It was as if all the life was being sucked out of him and dispersed into the panicking people throughout the room. I had never seen my father like this, and it shook my world in a way that I will never forget. I sometimes wonder what life would have been like for me if he had lived. That night I don’t remember if I slept...I don’t remember much at all really...just the sheer state of panic that descended over me and captured my demeanor. My vibrance was lost and I walked around, like a ghost of myself in disbelief that I was even still breathing. Tears are hard to come by when I think of it, I closed myself off emotionally because the pain was too great for me to bare. I still have trouble feeling anything other than regret...I never got to say goodbye, and it kills me to this day. That is all I can say about my father’s death. I always start to feel things when it all comes back to me and once the feelings start to emerge from beneath the layer of stoic solidity, I have to cover them back up again...maybe some day I’ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief and just let the tears flow...but until then, it will remain a painful distant memory.